


A Winter Soldier’s Tale

by Darklady



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, NCIS, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: and honor, and maybe humanity, and patriotism, distant and sad implications for duty, distant and sad slash implications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 22:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1834732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darklady/pseuds/Darklady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Donald Mallard, NCIS, is a first responder to the Potomac disaster site.<br/>He is also something - someone - else.<br/>When he sees the Winter Soldier his duty may not be clear, but his choice is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hello

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alex51324](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/gifts).
  * Inspired by [They Say He was a Soldier, From the Great Patriotic War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1776622) by [Alex51324](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324). 



> Inspired by **They Say He was a Soldier, From the Great Patriotic War**  
>  Well, from the comment section, mostly.  
> Technically unrelated, but this will be a better story if you have read the other first.  
>  _(Plus, you know, the whole thing about Alex being 1000% better as a writer and all that.)_

“Help.” There was a jagged pause. A breath. “Him.” 

Dr. Donald Mallard dropped to his knees beside the limp figure sprawled on the riverside. He was breathing, if shallowly. That was good, since the man was also bleeding. Heavily. The CPR which might help one would complicate the other. Plus? The doctor looked at his own age-spotted hands. What impact could he make on a chest that muscular? He was not as strong as he had been.

So instead of his medical bag, he clicked his radio. “Gibbs? I need an ambulance.”

His team would be here soon. That would be a good thing for the wounded man, but only if... He looked up at the figure in black. He had not moved – not even in the little ways that any man would to keep balance on the slippery slope. But then – The Soldier was not just any man.

“You are… Kuryakin.”

“Not any more.” He laid his badge picture-up on the ground, letting the operative read what he would. Even as a young man he would have hesitated to approach The Soldier, and he was now far from young.

A twig snapped.

Both men’s necks whipped right – checking the approach. Not, Ducky considered, his own crew. They would have been louder – calling and commenting. Not The Soldier’s people either. They would have made no noise at all. Unless…

“Your handler?” asked.

The Soldier focused his black gaze on Kuryakin – and then at the blue sky. “Up there.”

“Oh dear.” Up there now meant down… well, sufficient to say his current handler wouldn’t be responding. Which left the man who had been Illya Kuryakin with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand? He was facing a covert, quite possibly unsanctioned, off-mission, lethal Russian asset. On the other hand? He _was_ a covert, off-mission, still somewhat lethal _(thank you very much)_ Russian asset. 

And they had once been… not friends, but certainly not enemies. _(Comrades fit, but that was a complex word.)_ And Illya recognized the blackness behind those eyes. And Illya remembered every day what it was like to be nothing-any-more, to be unmade and untethered and inexpressibly alone.

Reaching into his bag, he clipped one green triage flag to the tree and dropped another on the chest of the not-quite-drowned man. Already the blond man’s breathing was even, normal. The paramedics would find him. No one – on this day of disaster – would question a doctor who treated and moved on.

“I have a house.”

“Safe house.” There was no question in the intonation, but Illya treated it as such.

Shaking off his white jacket, Illya passed it to his comrade. The sleeve and blue glove covered the silver metal of the exposed arm. It was not a disguise that would last past a second look – but in this mob of medics and responders, who would look twice?

“Safe enough. No one…. “ Will suspect me, he almost said. Except… his phone was buzzing as long-abandoned code words hit Google Alert. “We won’t be questioned.”

Not today. Likely not tomorrow.

Mostly because he hadn’t been content with retirement and had insisted on being – at least for purposes of paperwork – dead. Yes, it meant he didn’t get a pension. Right now that seemed like a fair price for not getting agents invading his basement.

The soldier hesitated.

“I have supplies. I can help.”

Still the man did not move.

Voices were approaching. Perhaps his team, perhaps some other. Friend? Foe? Illya laughed – one sharp snort. How would he know?

Desperate – he switched to Russian.

“Поставляются с меня.”

And the soldier did.


	2. Come Along

“Good evening, Dearest.” Dr. Mallard greeted the white-haired lady slumped in the parlor.

“Donald, darling.” The password and recognition came out automatically. Even with her mind gone, she still had that. He doubted that she understood. She had not responded to English for years, and in the last months even her French and German had vanished.

He had worried briefly over leaving her with The Soldier. ‘Mother’ was unpredictable on her best days. Fortunately age had palsied her once-lethal limbs. Now she sat, still draped in the remnants of great beauty.

“She is…” The Soldier’s question came as a shock. Not so much for the content, as for the act of speaking at all.

“Yes.” Another of the Red Room agents, one of the best. A young Illya had never had the honor of working with her, not while she wore the Widow designation.

“You did not…” The soldier did not finish the sentence. The older man heard the last of it anyway.

“No.” Illya’s answer was a rock. Certain of UNCLE’s elite had suggested Illya Kuryakin eliminate the security gap. Donald Mallard had made another call. “I am not like… other agencies. I will not abandon a comrade. That is… not for me.”

Loyalty had been Illya Kuryakin’s strength and his weakness. It had many times saved his life, and it had _(on one fateful day)_ ended it. Which it would bring today? Today what had come was a wounded warrior and a secret. Both were deadly. To him? He had long since ceased to fret over such questions. A man must live as he would, and accept what came.

Leaving her, they moved to the basement den of Dr. Mallard’s elegant townhome. It was dimmer here, a windowless room with thick walls to assure silence and heavy furniture suited to hard use, but little different from the retreats of other men in his class. _(Donald Mallard was only and always a man of his class.)_

Quickly, with the skill of two professions, he patched the more needful of The Soldier’s wounds.

The Soldier made no sound as he quickly stitched the deeper gashes. Even so, the shot of antibiotic was followed by morphine. _(Illya knew from experience that while one could train an agent to accept damage without complaint, one could not train out the sensation of pain.)_

The man… slumped. Past relaxation. Almost a collapse.

“None of that.” The kindly American Doctor Mallard would have left the man to rest. The child of the KGB would not run that risk. “Go. Shower. Quickly.”

Donald Mallard had, of course, had to return to the Potomac rescue site. More accurately, he had to give evidence that he had never left. Fortunately, the chaos of the day had made it impossible for anyone – even including Gibbs – to track any one man. More fortunately, the NCIS team knew their Medical Examiner as elderly, even perhaps frail. His early departure earned sympathy, not condemnation. Best of all? Illya shifted the heavy medical kit. The ever-rushing flow of injured and exhausted made it child’s play to ‘liberate’ the needful supply of suture kits and painkillers. Those last were heavily monitored, and not what a pathologist commonly used. Any other week he might have needed to invent some complex excuse for resupply. Now? He would write ‘used in Potomac rescue’. He would not, he realized with some amusement, even be lying.

He should perhaps have suggested the man sleep while waiting, but he did not think The Soldier would comply. One, because it was a fools trick to be unconscious and weaponless in unknown territory. Two, because The Soldier seemed to act only when directly commanded.

“Sit,” he ordered as The Soldier emerged. With the mud of the river gone, Illya could see his bruises. Many were already healing. So? The rumors of the Red Room asset were true. He had suspected as much;

“I must finish my mission,” he explained as he guided The Soldier to the sofa. “Wait here for me.”

“You will return?” The question was low, almost unheard. The strange note of pleading caught Illya’s attention.

“I promise. I will come for you.”

The Winter Soldier reached out, his metal hand strangely delicate as it skimmed over the blond-gone-gray hair and delicate cheekbones. Life sparked deep in the assets brown eyes and they searched Illya’s faded blue.

“Yes.” The word held more meaning than three letters should encompass. “You always do.”


	3. Farewell

The Soldier moved when Donald Mallard returned, but only to stand.

“I…want you?” 

It was a question. It was also an offer. A better man would have answered the first and ignored the second, but… this was perhaps not a night for better men.

Pulled by the gravity of years, Illya Kuryakin fell into those strong arms. Felt power. Felt heat. Thick brown hair. How many years had it been since he had felt such hair between his fingers? The scratch of stubble and chapped lips.

His hands roamed down.

The Soldier was hard.

“Let me,” he begged. Commanded.

The arms eased enough to allow him to fall to his knees.

Illya took it in, head and then the length of shaft. This was again a skill, one more practice of a distant youth. Like so many skills, it was one that once learned was forever remembered. The hardness on his tongue. The scent of musk human and rare.

The taste was bitter but clean. Salt and nostalgia and lust. How long since he had tasted another man? How many years longer since he had cared that he had?

The Soldier came in silence. Illya in regret.

In the end, they lay apart on the thick gray carpet.

The Soldier looked over, again tracing the shape of Illya’s face. “You are kind like him. But you are not him.”

“The man at the river?” Illya found himself proud. His voice had not shaken.

“He was…” The words died, twisted between accents and emotions. “I can not say.”

“You do not need to. There is always a man who was.“ _(There is always one man who was and is and always will be, and the price for loving that man was your soul, and the price was worth it.)_

“He…” The other man’s words were firmer now, tinged with the colors of New York and memory. “They made him my target.”

“That, too, is…” What should one say? Common? Inevitable? Was that the only ending for men like the two here? _(Wilde had written that all men killed the things they loved. Illya did not know all men, but he knew the men who killed. So few of them ever loved, yet perhaps Wilde had seen the truth of it.)_ There were always men who would be masters, and those men would always come to regret the tools they had forged, and in their fear they would plot to turn one tool against another.

“I do not want to kill him.”

“Then do not.” So simple an answer. Such simple words for the hardest decision, the maker and destroyer of the man who had been Kuryakin, who had been KGB, who had been UNCLE, who had been Agent Number 17, who had been partner and friend. Who had been – like The Soldier – just one more tool. 

A tool could serve, or it could break, or it could… most rarely…turn. Rebel.

Letting go of his hand was the second hardest act of Illya’s life.

“Go to him.”

Illya stood, gathering the hidden reservoir of his craft. Money. The Soldier would need that. Identity. There were still a few here, cards crafted for another man of similar description. They were not perfect. It had been years since Illya had bothered to update those particular packets. _(Since he had any hope that they would be wanted, that the man whose face shared those cards would return anywhere but in sad dreams.)_ Civilian clothing. Those were the worst of all, the tastes of an elderly doctor being ill matched to a young traveler, but fortunately of little importance. Fashion was not the dangerous matter that it had been in his working days. A fresh gun, unmarked and untraceable, because none of the other three gifts were a perfect defense.

The bag filled, Illya held it out.

The Soldier hesitated, confused. But it was confusion, not blankness.

The man who had once been more stepped away, back into Donald Mallard’s hollow life. “You are a handsome, deadly, brunet – but you are not my brunet. And I am not your blond.”

©KKR 2014


End file.
